An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Friday, June 22, 2012

Contrary to Stereotype, You Don’t Have to be Gay to Love Judy Garland…

Contrary
to stereotype, you don’t have to be Gay
to love Judy Garland, who died at
the age of only 47 on June 22, 1969.I
know because she stirred my young heterosexual loins when I discovered her
classic late ‘40’s early ‘50’s MGM musicals
on TV.When I discovered the same films
in glorious Technicolor later in
life, that romance was only reinforced.

The
story of Garland’s rise on the wings of an enormous talent and painful her fall
in ill health from years of draconian dieting, drugs, alcohol, and hopelessly
tragic love life are familiar.

She was pretty
much Born
in a Trunk, as she later sang.She was born as Francis Ethel
Gumm in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
the youngest child of a pair of vaudevillians
who ran a local movie house with live acts between the shows.It was 1922 and vaudeville was on its last
legs as audiences began to turn to movies and radio for entertainment.Her parents presented Baby Gumm in a song and dance act with her sisters when she was
just 2½ years old.

The
family moved to California in 1928
where her father operated another movie house and her archetypical stage mother
Ethel managed the Gumm Sister’s
vaudeville act and schemed to get her children, particularly her youngest, into
the movies.She managed to get them in
occasional short films beginning in 1928, including a Vidaphone release in 1930 in which young Francis had her first
solo.

They had
better luck on stage and became a headline act.While appearing at Chicago’s
Oriental Theater in 1934 comedian George
Jessel suggested that the girls use a more attractive name.They began performing as the Garland Sisters and Francis took the
name Judy from a popular Hoagy
Carmichael song.

The act
was broken up when an older sister eloped to Reno with a musician.In
1935 her mother’s dream was fulfilled when Judy was signed to a contract at MGM, by far and away the most prestigious
of all Hollywood studios.Although studio executives recognized her
talent, they were hard pressed to figure out what to do with the 13 year old
prone to baby fat who was too old for cute kid roles and two young for a
leading lady.

Studio
boss, the crusty Louis B. Mayer was
notoriously contemptuous, referring to Garland as “The hunchback.”The studio set up a short with another
teenage prospect, the soprano Deana
Durbin as sort of an audition for which one to keep.Mayer preferred Durbin, but before he made an
offer, her contract was up and she was snapped up by rival Universal leaving Mayer with, “the fat one.”

Her
singing eventually got her the attention she needed to break through.She sang her first signature tune, Zing
Went the Strings of My Hearton
a radio broadcast hours after her beloved father died later in 1935.It became a sensation.After singing a special arrangement of You
Made Me Love You for Clark Gable
at a studio function in 1937, it was incorporated into a studio all-star
review film, Broadway Melody of 1938.

Also in
’37 she was teamed for the first time Mickey
Rooney.The pair made 9 films
together, mostly let’s-get-the-gang-together-and-put-on-a-show musicals that
were wildly successful.To keep their
young talent on the set for long days and to control her weight the studio
pumped her up with amphetamines by day, and gave her barbiturates at night to
get her to sleep.It led to lifelong
pill popping and the stringent diets adversely affected her health.But the studio drove her relentlessly.

In
1939—the famous best year of movies ever—Garland was cast, only when Mayer
could not get Shirley Temple on
loan, as Dorothy Gale in Wizzard
of Oz.Her breasts were bound to
hide her 16 year old budding curves and she was corseted in a blue gingham
dress to make her look younger—it succeeded in making her look a little
chubbier than she actually was.But she
was sensational in the movie and was awarded a special juvenile Oscar for her performance.She was officially one of the brightest stars
in MGM famous galaxy.

In 1940
in addition to two more juvenile films, she made her first film as an adult, an
adaptation of George M. Cohan’s Little Nelly Kelly in which she
appeared in dual roles as both mother and daughter.For the next couple of years she alternated
rematches with Rooney and adult roles like in For Me and My Gal opposite
newcomer Gene Kelley.That film convinced studio executives to
give her the glamour build up and first adult romantic lead in Presenting
Miss Lilly Mars.

Meanwhile Garland’s star crossed love life was
alternately thrilling her and sending her into deep depression.A teen age affair with band leader Artie
Shaw ended when he eloped with Lana
Turner, deepening Garland’s deep insecurities about her looks.She became engaged to another musician, David Rose on her 18th
birthday but he was still married to comedienne Martha Raye and the studio insisted she wait to marry him until a
full year after his divorce.Both Rose
and the studio encouraged her to have an abortion in 1942 so that she could
continue to work.The marriage ended in
separation in 1943 divorce a year later.

In 1944
the studio cast her in her first big Technicolor film, Meet Me in St. Louis.Not only did she sing three great standards
in the film, but make-up man changed her look by re-shaping her eyebrows,
raising her hair line, and eliminating annoying nose pads the studio had been
having her wear for years.The result was
stunning and her wide set, big brown eyes and heart shaped face made her a
beauty, even briefly in her own mind.More important she fell in love with her director, the temperamental Vincent Minnelli and married him
shortly after completing the film.

It was
the happiest period of Garlands life.Her daughter Liza Minnelli
was born in 1946.MGM followed up with
other Technicolor extravaganzas, The Harvey Girls and The
Pirate which rematched her with Gene Kelly.But stress was getting to her and she suffered
a break-down during the filming of theThe Pirate.

Her
final years at MGM were punctuated with successful films like Easter
Parade with Fred Astaire and
The
Good Old Sumertimeand projects aborted by her frequent absences from
the set and erratic behavior.She was
replaced by Ginger Rogers in The
Barkleys of Broadway, Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun, and Jane Powell in Royal Wedding after she
was suspended by the studio while shooting each film.Garland was reported to have attempted
suicide after the last film.

Her
final completed MGM film was Summer Stock, again with Kelly.She was noticeably heavy during most of the
film, but two months later sensationally slimmed down to film the Get
Happy number which featured her in a man’s black coat and white shirt,
black nylons nearly to the hip and a jaunty black fedora, which would become
her signature look in her later career.

After that 1950 film came the debacle with Royal
Wedding.Her personal world was
also crumbling with the end of her marriage to Minnelli.Her days at MGM were over and no other studio
would touch her, given her troubled reputation.

To pick up the pieces of her
shattered career she hired agent Sid
Luft who decided to put her back on a live stage, where she had seldom
performed since her days in the sister act.He arranged a four month tour of the British Isles in 1951which included a four week sold out engagement
at the prestigious LondonPaladium.She received rave reviews and, according to the veteran manager of
the Paladium, the loudest ovation he ever heard.

In October she re-opened the
refurbished Palace Theater on Broadway with in a vaudeville style
show.It ran for 16 weeks and was
described as, “one of the greatest
personal triumphs in show business history.” She received a special Tony Award the program.

In 1952
Garland married her manager and gave birth to their daughter Lorna Luft.On the strength of her stage triumphs Garland and Luft formed a
production company and made a deal with Warner
Brothers to finance a comeback film, a re-make of the 1937 show biz tear
jerker A Star is Born.James Mason was cast as the washed up
movie actor opposite Garland’s rising star.After initially participating enthusiastically, as the production wore
on her old insecurities surfaced and she returned to her pattern of missing
shooting while pleading illness.The
delay cost Warner Brothers a lot of money and enraged studio boss Jack Warner, who refused to work with
her again.Despite the struggles in
production, the movie was a critical and popular hit, although the production
delays caused the film to actually lose money, putting Garland in financial
peril.

She was
nominated for an Academy Award for
best actress and was so expected to win that a television crew was dispatched
to her home, where she was recovering from the birth of her son Joseph.But Grace Kelly unexpectedly
won for The Country Girl in what Groucho
Marx wrote her was, “the biggest robbery since Brinks.”

It would
be seven years before Garland returned to the screen in a stark dramatic role
in Judgement
at Nuremburg for which she was nominated again for an Academy Award,
this time as best supporting actress.

Between
those two films Garland headlined highly successful TV specials, including CBS’s first big color broadcast in
1956.But she lost a $300,000 a year
contract with the network for more specials when she and Luft demanded more
control over content and format.

She
became the highest paid star to headline a Las
Vegas show, and returned to the Palace for another run as well as touring
and guesting on TV.

In 1959
she nearly died of acute hepetitus
and was told that she would never perform again.After months of agonizing treatment and
recovery she staged yet another wildly successful comeback at the Palladium and
was so taken by the adulation of British fans that she announced she would move
to London.

On April
26, 1961 Garland starred in a Carnegie
Hall concert that was captured on a two-disc album.Her triumphant performance was described, “the greatest night in show business
history.”The album was number 1 on the Bilboard charts for 13 weeks and stayed
on the charts for 95 weeks.It won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal of the Year.The album is a perennial seller and has never
gone out of issue.

The
success of this concert and of her turn in Judgment
at Nuremberg several doors opened for her.She made three more films.She
voiced a cat in the animated film Gay Puree featuring, at her
suggestion, songs by songs by Harold
Arlen and Yip Harburg, the team
behind the music for The Wizard of
Oz.She made another dramatic film
with Burt Lancaster, A
Child is Waiting about the treatment of mentally handicapped children
in a state hospital.Although she got
good notices, the film was a box office failure.Her final film, made in England in 1963 was I
Could Go On Singing, a turgid soap opera with Dirk Bogarde in which she played a troubled superstar much like
herself.The film was enlivened by
several concert scenes.

Meanwhile
as her marriage to Luft deteriorated amid charges of physical and financial
abuse, a new agent patched up Garland’s relationship with CBS, which signed her
to a new deal.Her first special
featured Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and aired in 1962.It was such a spectacular success that the
network offered her an astonishing $24 million dollar contract, the fattest in
history, to undertake a weekly series.

Garland
had long maintained that she did not want to be tied down to a weekly series,
but she was deeply in debt, owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IRS
and was piling up legal bills fighting with Luft over custody of her
children.After two more successful
specials, the Judy Garland Show premiered in September 1963.It was a critical and moderate popular
success showcasing Judy and featuring many big name guest stars.But CBS scheduled it for Sunday nights
opposite NBC’s juggernaught Bonanza.With the cost of the star’s contract, the
show could not make money and was canceled, emotionally and financially
devastating Garland.

She
returned to the stage, including another foray at her favorite venue, the
Palladium this time co-staring with her 18 year old daughter Liza.The show was filmed for a successful British
television special.A 1964 tour of Australia was marred by a serious bout
of pleurisy and bad press for a delayed concert in Melbourne.But Garland fell
for her Australian promoter and claimed to have married him secretly on a
freighter off of Hong Kong but she
was still legally married to Luft.The
couple officially wed in November of 1965.

In 1967
she was offered a role based on her in an adaptation of Jaqueline Suzan’s pot boiler Roman a clef novel Valley of the Dolls but her real life
dependency on prescription pills disrupted production again and she was
replaced by Susan Hayward.She returned to the Palace for a 16 week
engagement featuring both of her daughters the same year.

Her
health and marriage were both deteriorating.She divorced Heron and married for a fifth and last time to Mickey Deans a sleazy discothèque
manager who had provided her with prescription drugs.Her 1969 marriage in March occurred the same
month as her last concert in Copenhagen.

On June
22 Deans found her dead in their London apartment.The British coroner discounted suicide, but
found that she died of prolonged over-exposure to the pain killer Seconal.Her London physician reported that she would have had only months to
live anyway due to advanced cirrhosis of
the liver.

Twenty
thousand people lined up to view her body at a prominent New York funeral
home.Garland’s tragic life and death
have undoubtedly contributed to her becoming a cult figure in American popular
culture.But the glorious record of her
films transcends pity and camp.